Make SMES units more fun

[MoonJesus]

The SMES meta is boring - you set the output to 150 or so, set the input to max so it charges, and leave it for the rest of the round. Cog1 and other maps have substations with other SMES units that you can walk to and set their output in the event the primary ones get blown up somehow, but otherwise they're just usually left alone to do nothing.

Lets brainstorm ways of making it fun - maybe add stress to the SMES so there is incentive to spread out the power load, like if more than a certain # of APC's are drawing power from one SMES is runs the risk of overloading it and exploding in fun ways & possibly electrocuting nearby people  (hey look a new way to sabotage the station!)

Lets also mix in matsci - conductive or magnetic thingamajigs can be manufactured and installed into SMES units to vastly increase their storage amount, charge rates, etc....

[palpetinus]

I'd be on board if powering the station back up wasn't such a chore. A powersink is already a roundender, having one guy diddle with a few SMES units to end the round seems a bit boring.

[MoonJesus]

Thats another problem right there; too many things deemed 'round ending'. Engineers are supposed to fix the station. There are experimental local generators, backup char furnaces, high-capacity erebite powercells that can be inserted into APCs...

I don't usually like rounds that go past 60-70 min mark either BUT we can't just be defeatists all the time

[coolvape]

it's silly that powersinks are considered round-ending and the shuttle gets called as a result of them reasonably often
not only can they be countered by increased power output(from SMES's or hotwiring) but the only real problem they cause is apcs turn off and don't automatically turn back on and that just requires manually walking around to fix the apcs. not exactly a huge deal but it turns into "oh we gotta call the shuttle now because the lights are off "

[Eagletanker]

it's silly that powersinks are considered round-ending and the shuttle gets called as a result of them reasonably often
not only can they be countered by increased power output(from SMES's or hotwiring) but the only real problem they cause is apcs turn off and don't automatically turn back on and that just requires manually walking around to fix the apcs. not exactly a huge deal but it turns into "oh we gotta call the shuttle now because the lights are off "

Not even that, when it happens you just switch out APC batteries. More fun ways for power management and SMES are good and should be absolutely done

[Ikea]

Powersinks are kinda round ending because no one wants to wait in darkness for 20 minutes in order for them to do what they want to do. Most jobs rely on power in some way or another, powersinks kinda just stop jobs from doing there jobs.

[coolvape]

it's silly that powersinks are considered round-ending and the shuttle gets called as a result of them reasonably often
not only can they be countered by increased power output(from SMES's or hotwiring) but the only real problem they cause is apcs turn off and don't automatically turn back on and that just requires manually walking around to fix the apcs. not exactly a huge deal but it turns into "oh we gotta call the shuttle now because the lights are off "

Not even that, when it happens you just switch out APC batteries. More fun ways for power management and SMES are good and should be absolutely done

agreed, smes's are  currently so set and forget, or in the case of solars "hotwire and ignore", that it's dull.
I've tried to do "Active smes management"(adjusting inputs and outputs based on current power generation) for solars as an ai on say, cog1, but it's not super fun in addition to being completely pointless, since setting and forgetting will handle all the poeeer the station could ever use and more. It'd be interesting if engineers could manually allocate more power to various sections of the station as needed.
the only real power sink on the station are fabs(mostly just for QM, and wholly solved by 1 local gen) and the science teleporter. Maybe if more things on the station drew more power it'd make more sense?
Things that could be sensible to draw more power than they do imo:
-airlocks
-pod bay doors
-mineral magnet
-turrets
-cloning pods
-genetics pods

If things drew more power having more finicky and manually run power distribution could be a lot more interesting than the current situation

[palpetinus]

Powersinks are kinda round ending because no one wants to wait in darkness for 20 minutes in order for them to do what they want to do. Most jobs rely on power in some way or another, powersinks kinda just stop jobs from doing there jobs.

Exactly, it's not "engineers not fixing things", usually it comes down to having to FIND the damn sink first (~5 minutes if it's placed well), then removing it, communicating to the crew that it has been removed and then manually powering every single APC on the station back on or wait 10~15 minutes for them to get enough power.

Usually, in my personal experience, the engineering SMES are already set up with max input and slightly below max output. Only hotwiring could make it go faster. Just try to get engineering to help with that, engineering usually has one or two employees that just go "haha PTL go zap" all round and don't pay attention to the station at all.

Powersinks aren't a roundender because it's hard to set everything back up in theory, they're a roundender because in practicality, 90% of the station can only sit around with their thumbs up their arse until MAYBE engineering does their job for once. Better to just call the shuttle, spare everyone the headache and move on to the next round.

Sorry to hijack the thread for powersink talk, but it relates to power in general, replace "powersink" stuff with "overloaded, exploded SMES" instead or something lol

[Eagletanker]

. Only hotwiring could make it go faster. Just try to get engineering to help with that, engineering usually has one or two employees that just go "haha PTL go zap" all round and don't pay attention to the station at all.

Powersinks aren't a roundender because it's hard to set everything back up in theory, they're a roundender because in practicality, 90% of the station can only sit around with their thumbs up their arse until MAYBE engineering does their job for once. Better to just call the shuttle, spare everyone the headache and move on to the next round.

Alright two things
1. If your running a high power burn and you Hotwire, you are going to kill people. The problem also lies in power being drained from everywhere, so bypassing the SMES isn’t really the best idea. Hotwiring solars and then just letting the SMES units do their job is just as fast.

2. I wonder why engineers don’t really stick around/care much when it’s a shuttle call even if they are doing something. Maybe if idk, you let them do their jobs (of which many a engineer is new), power would come back online instead of having to waste time manually switching out APCs with fresh batteries and then having to wait for new cells to recharge.

I lied third thing. Powersinks give a moment of complete and utter darkness for a antag to do the things they need to to set up. It seems the problem here comes from the players, not the item in that they don’t trust engineering or the antags to do their jobs and instead call the shuttle, which at that point, why bother leaving the engine and hoping it doesn’t explode to go and help a station who’s going to say fuck you and call the shuttle, usually without a way to call back cause medbay and engineering need to get on line and the bridge is limited to the CE, so no recalling that way. Powersinks are fine, this just represents a larger issue with the Classic Playerbase and its general massive apathy towards anyone.

[Ikea]

If people arent doing something because it isnt fun to do, maybe it isn't an issue of apathy but an issue of game design. Like, power will eventually come back online after power sinks, but classic rounds tend to be a hour long, ten minutes is a sixth of the round, and that tends to be the minimum amount of time, often times its closer to 20 minutes to 30 for power to be fixed. Its not out of apathy they want shuttle, its out of boredom.

[coolvape]

what if powersinks had more effects than draining power and eventually exploding? Maybe lengthening the drain time and causing other disruptive effects while it's going?
like apc zaps, randomly opening and closing doors, lights flickering or exploding at random, stuff like that. It'd make it go from something that goes unnoticed until it's too late for anyone to put in the effort of fixing it to something that makes the round more interesting, and raises questions like "Is the AI doing that?" "Is the engine hotwired?" - and randomly opening and closing doors could have interesting extra outcomes like "oh shit, the brig doors are open and the crimers can escape"

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also a smes idea - emag smes's to overload them and let them output power at much higher levels, making a sort of hotwire at the point of the battery. Or reduce output to negative levels(like the ptl), and drain power to charge the smes! No explosion, of course, and easily reparable, but fun!

[MoonJesus]

bump for consideration

[Dhaidburt]

A bump from 2021?? I don't even know if most of the stuff in this thread is even relevant to today. Classic rounds used to last an hour??